I'm about to start on a Sitecore project in 6-8 weeks time. I have extensive ASP.NET MVC experience (4 years) and know the ins-and-outs of web development fairly well.

I am scheduled for official Sitecore developer training in 4 weeks. I would like to prepare myself further by learning as much as I can from online, freely available resources.

I am aware of the extensive blogging community that exists, but most of these blogs are focused at developers with some level of expertise. At this point I am more after resources that focus on learning and training from ground up.

Where can I go to find information like this? Any community resources? E-books? Webinars? Youtube tutorials?

Also; if anyone can recommend any books I can buy, that would be much appreciated as well.

Online Sitecore Learning Resources

Online Training/E-Learning

Sitecore Developer Foundation eLearning

Free official foundations course to teach students the basics of Sitecore XP.

During the course, students will build a basic website. They will learn how to create data infrastructure, build editable pages and publish content. Students will also build simple MVC components using a text editor with minimal coding. This course gives students a complete overview of the different elements in the process of building a website with Sitecore.

Professional Sitecore 8 Development: A Complete Guide to Solutions and Best Practices
This book is targeted towards both the beginning Sitecore developer with no experience as well as those seasoned Sitecore developers looking to improve the stability, maintainability and quality of their Sitecore solutions.

Practical Sitecore 8 Configuration and Strategy: A User Guide for Sitecore's Content and Marketing Capabilities
This book is targeted towards the marketer looking to get the most out of their investment in the Sitecore platform.

Sitecore Cookbook for Developers: Over 70 incredibly effective and practical recipes to get you up and running with Sitecore development
This book is targeted towards beginner Sitecore developers as well as experienced who want to explore core Sitecore architecture for site development, doing customizations, improving performance, and scalability.

Get Sandboxing

Above all, only reading or going through blog or articles won't do it all. Start with a Sitecore Sandbox application and for any of the Sitecore components or modules...integrate them - break them and fix them until you get it right. That has helped me always. I am big fan of Sandbox Apps.